Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/332

 from one long leg to the other, shrugging a nervous, bony shoulder. "Oh, what's the sense of anything, anyway?"

Rose-Marie turned a patient, clear brown eye toward her and shook his head vaguely. Gnats buzzed about his flexible ears, and with a swishing fanning motion he displaced them.

"If my back aches," she warned him callously, "you'll have to take me home, you know! Tired or not. It feels as if it might, any minute. I never used to get tired, this way."

A half mile along the road, set off to the left, among cool trees and behind a great well sweep, she perceived suddenly a white farm house. It stood alone, neighborless and well up on a drained, southerly slope; smoke rose languidly from one of its chimneys.

"Perhaps they'll give us some milk, Rose-Marie," said Caroline, "and farms usually have cookies. If there are any children there, you can give 'em rides to pay for it!"

Rose-Marie nodded and they went on with some spirit. As they turned into the deep front yard Caroline almost wept with comfort and a pathetic